Rum Ragged: Land of Fish and Seals

Music

Apr 13

Rum Ragged’s 2019 album The Thing About Fish has gotten a lot easier to find — it was added to digital services last week. It’s a fantastic album and everyone should add it to their playlist. From the title track (by Jim Payne) to the album closer ‘Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s’ (by Otto Kelland) it is a solid, entertaining and thoughtful take on modern NL folk/traditional music.

Margaret Sharp Peace, CC — Margaret Sharpe Peace
Image courtesy of the New Zealand Peace family archives and Kaye Soulsby/ Modernist Commons. Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

I don’t want to gush… but I’m probably going to anyway. I’m a huge fan.

Today I’m listening to ‘Land of Fish and Seals’ on repeat. It is a beautiful track. It is based around a poem of the same title by Scottish-born writer Margaret Sharpe Peace. Peace lived in St. John’s Newfoundland in the mid 1800s where she wrote her book The Convict Ship and other Poems (PDF). Land of Fish and Seals did not appear in that book but was in Murphy's Sealers' Song Book (PDF). It’s a beautiful poem in which Peace contrasts life in Newfoundland with that of other nations:

Let sunny India her wealth proclaim,

her gorgeous glowing sky,

Her silken stores, her golden veins,

and flowers of every dye;

We envy not her gaudy show

where death insidious steals,

For wealth's bright diamond deck our brow

in the land of fish and seals.

Let Italy and France and Spain

their vine-clad valleys praise,

Let Greece and Rome take up the strain

and sing of bye-gone days;

Of classic fames and gorgeous names

which fame's loud trump reveals,

We boast not of past glory

in the land of fish and seals.

--Margaret Sharp Peace

Survival has never been easy in Newfoundland and the poem acknowledges that, but it also celebrates that living here, especially in the 1800s, took (or maybe fostered) character and bravery.

Rum Ragged’s take on the text is haunting. The melody, and their production/delivery, lend an emotional punch you can’t ignore.

It’s fantastic stuff — take some time to check it out.

Rum RaggedMargaret Sharp PeaceOtto Kelland

Robert Hiscock

Robert grew up in a tiny Newfoundland community called Happy Adventure. These days he lives in Gander, NL and his happiest adventures are spent with his two Labrador retrievers exploring the island while listening to a soundtrack of local music.

When the dogs are napping Robert takes photos, writes about Newfoundland, and makes a podcast.

https://productofnewfoundland.ca